Hello,
We were wondering if anyone using bacula had come up with a creative way to backup their Catalog. We understand the basic dilemna -- that one should not backup a database that is in use, because it's not a coherent view. Currently we've managed to keep our filesets and jobs small enough that we're able to run jobs (a few full jobs along with an incremental of all jobs) in under 24 hours and then (per the bacula manual) backup the Catalog afterwards when nothing is running. However, we're faced with some new jobs that may take 4 days to complete. We have multiple tape drives, so we can run a "long-running" job on one drive while we use another for nightly Incrementals without contention. But, we would also like to get nightly backup of the Catalog that reflects the changes introduced by the nightly Incrementals. So, my question is whether anyone had any ideas about the feasibility of getting a backup of the Catalog while a single "long-running" job is active? This could be in-band (database dump) or out-of-band (copy of database directory on filesystem or slave database server taken offline). We are using MySQL, but would not be opposed to switching to PostGRES if it buys us anything in this regard. What I wonder specifically (in creating my own solution) is: 1) If I backup the MySQL database directory, or sync to a slave server and create a dump from that, am I simply putting the active "long-running" job records at risk of being incoherent, or am I risking the integrity of the whole Catalog in doing so? 2) If I attempt a dump of the MySQL catalog and lock the tables while doing so, what will the results be to the active "long-running" job? Will it crap out or simply pause and wait for database access when it needs to read/write to the database? And if so, how long will it wait? thanks for reading, Stephen -- Stephen Thompson Berkeley Seismological Laboratory step...@seismo.berkeley.edu 215 McCone Hall # 4760 404.538.7077 (phone) University of California, Berkeley 510.643.5811 (fax) Berkeley, CA 94720-4760 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Try before you buy = See our experts in action! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-dev2 _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
